


But none of them are ours

by wishonadarkstar



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, Forgiveness, Gen, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 10:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14376900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishonadarkstar/pseuds/wishonadarkstar
Summary: Cornered, Kylo Ren calls his mother, and then he finds his way home.





	But none of them are ours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spookykingdomstarlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/gifts).



> This is meant as a companion fic to my other gift, [There are many names in history](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14369346). I wrote the other fic first, but these should be okay to read in either order.

Kylo Ren watched as the would-be assassins died where they stood and reeled in the echoes of of their death-thoughts.

He couldn’t stay, though — the coup hadn’t been so poorly planned that him destroying one group of assassins would be nearly enough. He could feel the echoes of their determination throughout his flagship.

He needed to escape, needed off the Harbinger so he could figure out his next move, and he needed to have been gone an hour ago.

He fled through the halls of the ship, slamming people against walls without much thought for whether they were out to get him or just in his way. Kylo Ren had never been much a creature for planning.

The hangar was packed with stormtroopers, but the terror and anger fueled by the attempt on his life gave him power. He yielded it like a hammer, sweeping blasters and men alike aside as if they were as inconsequential as crushed leaves.

The ship was a haven; it always had been. He’d been a good enough pilot, his dad had taught him young, and with the Force enhancing his reaction times, he looked like a fantastic one.

He made it out of the ship and into hyper without losing his shields. As soon as the reassuring glow of stars sweeping past faster than light filled the screen, he slid out of his chair and huddled on the floor and breathed.

“Long live the Supreme Leader,” Kylo said to himself, full of self-loathing and self-pity by equal measures.

He didn’t know what to do next.

~*~

He paced the confines of the ship for hours and still couldn’t decide what to do or where to go. When he dropped out of hyper in a dead system on the edges of wild space, he did the thing that most rational beings would do when trapped and lost and frightened.

He commed his mother.

The codes shouldn’t have worked. If his mother was in any way worthy of the esteem the galaxy gave her, she would have disabled the commlink codes he’d known when he’d left.

She hadn’t.

He tried not to let the gratitude destroy him.

“This is General Organa,” she said into the crackling, weak connection between them. He opened his mouth to say something cruel and confident and within character, but all that came out was a half-sob, and he shook his head.

“Who is this?” Leia Organa said in the wary tones of someone who knew they were on the line with Kylo Ren but weren’t sure why.

“Mother,” he said at last. “They tried to — I —”

She hushed him, and he couldn’t hold back the sob this time, and he slouched in the seat and tried to suppress the urge to bury his face in his hands.

“Ben,” she said softly, and she sounded as hurt and desperate as he felt. “Ben, tell me what’s wrong.”

“I don’t know what to do!” he blurted out.

There was silence on her end of the line, and then she said calm as anything, everything the galaxy and her son loved her for, “You come home.”

Kylo Ren, or not, because Kylo Ren wouldn’t cry, he just wouldn’t, nodded his head even though at this distance there couldn’t be any visuals, and then he sobbed again.

“Ben, you hear me? You come _home,_ and then you keep going.”

~*~

He half expected the Resistance to shoot him out of their skies. Instead he was cleared for landing and put his ship down in the middle of a formal welcoming committee. 

When he walked out into the group, he could feel their fear and loathing. It buffeted him or buffered him, he couldn’t tell anymore, and his mother walked right up to him and wrapped her arms around him.

He was certain, in that moment, with his mother’s voice in his ears saying “Ben, Ben, oh, my son,” over and over like she couldn’t believe it, that Kylo Ren hadn’t actually survived that coup.

It made his stomach twist, and he clung harder to his mother, who seemed diminished, somehow. Frail.

He pretended he hadn’t noticed that.

She turned to the crowd of bedraggled Resistance members, and one of them strode forward with all the determination of a man going to his death.

Kylo — Ben? He didn’t know, couldn’t know — recognized him. He remembered him as much by the taste of his thoughts and the texture of his fears as by the determination in his gaze as he stuck out his hand.

“Kylo Ren,” Poe said, looking like he’d rather have swallowed his own tongue than offer him this momentary peace.

Kylo considered that, considered how many selves he’d had and been, and glanced at the man’s uniform, stiffly starched and looking out of place on the body of the best pilot of the Resistance.

He let it go, because he had nothing to offer as a correction.

“Admiral,” he greeted. He took the man’s hand and did his best not to let the fact that Poe Dameron’s fear and self-loathing was like a torrential rain across his psyche show in his expression.

~*~

His mother moved him into her quarters, and he slept fitfully on the long cot pressed against the far wall from her.

Even the minds of the First Order were regimented, orderly. It had been easy to sleep without stepping into the nightmares of his compatriots. Here, his mother’s home, everything was different.

Eventually, he caved and went to find the scavenger girl, Rey, and she gestured at him to sit across from her.

She was reading a book old enough that Kylo didn’t recognize the script it was written in, and eventually she laid a plastic marker on her page and looked at him.

Her eyes were brown, not blue, but her gaze was as piercing as his uncle’s, and she nodded slowly.

“Rey,” he said, trying out her name.

“Ben,” she said, and he remembered that she hadn’t called him anything else, really, since she’d found out the name his mother had given him, and he nodded back.

“I should —” he said.

She smiled tightly. “You’re here now,” she said. “How’s Leia?”

Kylo frowned, and she nodded one more time, and then her hand slipped into his and she said, “You should meditate with me.”

He followed her lead, breath for breath, and as he sank into the hot magma of his own thoughts he thought he missed the soft lapping waves of her own.

He didn’t open his eyes, though, and her hand was small and rough against his.

He thought about Poe, and Poe’s fear, and thought — I should —

~*~

His mother found him after the disaster with Poe, and she sat down on the floor with him.

“Ben,” she said, oh-so-confident even though no one else was, her voice the same calm surety that had guided his childhood. “Ben, you can’t control how they react to you.”

His temper flared, and he heard the crack of something behind him breaking from the force of his fury, and he felt suddenly ashamed.

She squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

~*~

He answered the questions of the Resistance Intelligence officers, and in a way that was better. They didn’t expect anything of him except that he answer their questions.

None of them even particularly cared about his loyalty.

When he wasn’t with them, he was with his mother, who had grown too weak to really go into her own office anymore. Instead, Leia conducted her business from a couch that someone had found in storage somewhere.

Kylo held her hand and fed her energy through the Force-bond that connects all mothers with their children. He watched as the others in the Resistance slowly grew used to his presence, and fed her their energy too, in whatever ways they could.

~*~

When she died, he was furious, though mostly at himself. Her quarters were destroyed around him in the force of his fury. It didn’t seem right when he looked around him at the mess, but it did seem _appropriate_ , and that was almost as good.

He wasn’t invited to the funeral.

He went anyway.

Poe Dameron, still looking as miserably uncomfortable in his formal officer dress, delivered the eulogy.

That place belonged to Ben Solo, but Ben Solo was dead and so was Leia Organa, and the galaxy just wasn’t fair.

~*~

He shouldn’t have sought Admiral Dameron out, but he thought if the man was feeling even one tenth as badly as he was, he’d need someone to prop him up. He also thought that the Admiral, newly minted leader of the Resistance, wouldn’t be able to find someone.

Also… he could feel the warm glow that had been his mother hovering at the edges of his awareness. He thought that if she was worried about Poe, he could at least ease that.

It would be more than he’d ever done for her in life, after all.

So he found his mother’s secret stash of moonshine and sought out the dark and warming twist of thoughts that was Poe Dameron, and set the bottle at his feet. 

He nearly left, but then Poe looked up at him from where he was huddled against the wall, and thought very clearly, “ _Kylo Ren_ ,” and it was something. At least it was a name, wasn’t ‘the General’s son” in scathing tones that made him want to punch people in the face. It wasn’t "Ben", said softly and unsurely by those too new to the Resistance to know to fear him.

It was honest, and he preferred honesty.

“You never think of me as Ben Solo,” he said. He’d been planning on offering condolences, because that was the done thing. His own thoughts had mastered him, however, and he frowned at himself.

“I figure a guy who kills his own father doesn’t want to be called by his name,” Poe said.

Kylo thought about that, long and hard, and realized that Poe was right. That was the reason his name felt so wrong on his lips and over his heart. Solo wouldn’t have killed his father.

He’d never thought of that before.

Kylo sank to the floor next to Poe, close enough to feel the warmth off of him, and said, “I brought a peace offering.”

He shoved the bottle toward Poe, and the man flinched back, a sudden vision flashing between them of Kylo Ren in a mask holding him helpless with his mind.

“I plan on getting very drunk,” Kylo said, to dispel the vision. “I think she’d have liked that. I think she’d like it more if you joined me.”

“You don’t get to manipulate me with her wishes,” Poe said aloud, but his mind was all of a yes. Kylo shrugged and felt more gratified than he should by the fact that Poe didn’t jerk away from the brush of their shoulders.

He let Poe take his drink and then stole his bottle back to drink off of before forcing himself to relax.

Poe’s mind was wide open, a brush of “ _Why are you here?_ ” echoing with confusions of “ _next to me_ ” and “ _with the Resistance._ ”

So Kylo told him.

They slumped closer and closer together in the hallway in their shared drink and shared grief. Kylo didn’t have to dream anyone else’s nightmares about him, that night.

He wished it could be a relief.

The siren woke them, and he kept Poe from falling over in startlement, saying: “Infirmary. You need to wake up, Admiral.”

“Aw, hell,” Poe grumbled, and then, clear as if he’d said it aloud, “ _What do I even call you?_ ”

“Ben,” Kylo said, surprising himself. “I mean, if you like. It’s the name my mother gave me, and...”

“I should be protesting how much you read my mind,” Poe interjected.

Ben hauled him to his feet, and they both staggered.

“Why aren’t you?” Ben asked, distracted by thinking about names and the ones he’d been willing to abandon.

He wondered if he’d like Ben as well if his mother hadn’t died, and then tried not to think about it at all.

“Something Rey said. She told me I had to work on my own shields, because I think extremely loudly, and then she said that, uh… that your Force strength lies primarily in the mind.”

Rey was talking entirely too much about him, but she wasn’t wrong. Besides, it was almost certainly Dameron’s business as an officer in the Resistance to know his strengths.

“I can also stop blaster bolts,” Ben said, and then he froze. It was the wrong joke, wrong timing. Poe covered the lapse for him, trying to punch him in the shoulder and nearly missing from the dizziness of the hangover.

“Trust me, that one I knew.”

~*~

In another lifetime, the controlled chaos of the Resistance Command Center in an imminent attack would have felt like home to him. Here, though, all it really felt like was betrayal, and he wasn’t even sure anymore whose it was.

Still, the timing for this attack was more than opportune. He tried to seize Dameron’s attention and hold it long enough to say “We have spies,” but Poe was too busy doing his job.

In that other lifetime, Ben would have been the one to take over the Resistance on his mother’s death.

In this one, he was lucky if they didn’t help him follow her.

Poe took control of the situation briskly and authoritatively, in the way the General would have, so that when Poe said “Organa,” his heart skipped a beat.

But no. She was dead, and Poe wasn’t even thinking of her.

“Take Beebee-Ate; get up there. See if you can hold them off.”

His own thoughts were echoed by everyone around them.

In another lifetime, Poe would have been in the air with the droid he loved better than most.

It wasn’t fair.

~*~

There was a Knight of Ren in the air, and he got made; Kylo Ren knew that they’d only have the tech to track one of them through hyper, and he made a decision.

He’d run away from death once before.

He wouldn’t now.

When the entire contingent appeared in realspace around him, he smiled and made sure the flimsie with the true coordinates was destroyed.

~*~

There was torture, because he was a traitor now.

It was personal, because he’d taught his knights pain intimately and well.

~*~

He shouldn’t have gone back for BB-8. It had gotten him shot and nearly kept them from escaping at all. Ben found he was too-worried about what would break the Admiral, the leader of the Resistance, to worry about his own safety.

Maybe this was how his father had felt, all those years ago.

He didn’t like it.

~*~

BB-8 piloted them home, and Ben Organa dealt with his injuries aboard the ship as best he could.

“Do you really think he’ll like the ship?” Ben asked the droid, who beeped an affirmative.

“Good,” Ben said.

The droid agreed.

Ben wondered if he shouldn’t try to repair him, but it was hard enough repairing himself, so he let it be.

Poe seemed like the sort of being who’d prefer to handle repairs himself.

~*~

They hadn’t given him clearance codes on the flimsie he’d long since destroyed, and he wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to remember them even if they had.

Still, he knew one set of codes that the Resistance wouldn’t fire on, and he punched them in when he saw them scrambling the light fighters.

He couldn’t blame them; he could completely understand being wary of the First Order command shuttle.

It took a breathtakingly long time before he finally got a response.

“Unknown vessel, this is Admiral Dameron of the Resistance. Identify yourself, over.”

“Dameron,” Ben said, relief flooding him. Poe had made it. The Resistance had made it.

He wasn’t sure when that had become important to him. “This is Ben Organa requesting permission to land.” The name felt foreign and strange on his lips, but it fit over his heart better than any name he’d ever had.

He wondered if Poe would understand it if he thanked him.

“Permission granted,” Poe said. “Welcome home, Commander. Will we need medical standing by?”

_Commander_ , Ben thought, in a military he’d been trying to eradicate, but then maybe that was the price of having a name that he could wear. It seemed like the sort of tax Poe Dameron would be willing to exact, and Ben wasn’t sure he could blame him.

“Please,” Ben said.

“See you dirtside,” Poe said, and Ben cut the channel before he could say more than he meant to.

He glanced at the scuffed up droid he’d retrieved for the Admiral. The droid beeped a relieved series of chirps at him that he couldn’t quite bear to translate, even to himself.

~*~

Ben managed to get off the ship on his own two feet, but he couldn’t make it very far before he had to lean against the bulkhead for balance.

There was a crowd, again, and Poe was at the front of it, again.

This time he had no mother to greet him, to tell him he was home.

Poe strode up to him and looked like he was going to say something until BB-8 came careening out of the ship, a whirlwind of excited beeping and explanations for their adventures.

Ben wondered how fluent Poe was in Binary, but didn’t ask.

“Sorry it took so long to get back, Admiral,” he said instead. “They had your droid.”

“I appreciate it,” Poe said, finally drawing away from trying to smother the droid.

“Commander Organa,” a medic called, and Ben took a few moments to remember what Poe had called him, then nodded and let the medic scan him.

“You’ll need to come to the infirmary. We’ll have you good as new in a few hours.”

“I’ll debrief you then,” Poe said, still coiled around his droid. “Feel better.”

He meant it, too. Ben had to wonder about that, about the sort of man who could resist the torture that Kylo was capable of inflicting and then tell Kylo to ‘Feel better.’

“Of course,” Ben said, trying to think of an adequate way to express… everything.

Admiral Dameron had just given him a gift priceless beyond belief, but all he had was —

He opened up his shields and made sure Poe could feel that sick twisting sensation of gratitude and hope and homecoming. He knew it had worked when Poe dropped his cheek back to the droid’s head and grinned.

“Now we keep going,” Poe said, and it surprised Ben into laughing.

“Now we keep going,” he agreed, and finally, finally, Commander Ben Organa walked off the tarmac and into the Resistance base.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have not yet read my other gift, [There are many names in history](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14369346), now is the time to do it, as the fics are meant to be read together.


End file.
